Tuesday, August 17, 2010

Los Campesinos! - All's Well That Ends EP

Los Campesinos! say they're not breaking up, and that's good enough for me. There's no denying, however, that the innocently energetic indie kids who banded together four years ago at the University of Cardiff, in Wales, are no more. Oh, they're still hilarious, still capable of thrilling a packed room, but this year's glorious, enigmatic Romance Is Boring-- like don't-call-it-an-album We Are Beautiful, We Are Doomed two years ago-- isn't so much twee as grotesque. The group members still perform under the Campesinos! surname, but in recent months two have left: singer/keyboardist Aleksandra, in a long-planned move, and drummer Ollie, under somewhat mysterious circumstances.

Now, in the form of a stopgap EP, comes another about-face. Los Campesinos! lyricist/shouter Gareth has let it be known that he hates acoustic performances. But All's Well That Ends-- available digitally or as a hard-to-find 10"-- is made up of pretty much those, pulling together acoustic versions of four Romance Is Boring tracks in roughly the style of the band's NPR "Tiny Desk Concerts" appearance early last month. By its nature, the release is for fans only, particularly in its expensive physical edition. That said, Los Campesinos! are hardly trying to fool anybody here, and devotees have plenty of reasons to be pleased. Like the most contemplative moments from the last two records, All's Well That Ends points a potential way forward for this constantly evolving band. It offers an early glimpse of the new lineup and sheds clearer light on some of the group's most bewilderingly complex songs, without sacrificing intricacy or exposing too many shortcomings.

I say "too many," of course, because exposing shortcomings is sort of Gareth's forte. If Romance Is Boring is in some ways the most cerebral Los Campesinos! record, it's also their most physical. Gareth is obsessed with bodies, and these new arrangements make it easier to notice the beautifully overwrought Roald Dahl vividness with which he describes them. There's a Hypercolor bruise, kept "like a pet, a private joke/ They told no others." There's a comparison of flabby bellies, an "ear to the door/ Listening to the landing floorboards" to figure out when the coast is clear to scamper from bed to bathroom. There's also a wonderfully, morbidly evocative image of a corpse dropped from a plane, so that it leaves a chalk outline capable, like something out of a children's game, of determining "the initial of who you'll marry"-- and here's a crucial difference from the kids' stuff-- "...now I'm not around." It's worth letting yourself get past the sublime, Andrew Bujalski-level awkwardness of Gareth's sexual declarations about "phallic cake" or post-rock to get to these gorgeously expressive details.

All's Well That Ends helps by showing there's more to these songs musically than the messy maximalism of their album renditions. The stripped-down arrangements suggest that violinist Harriet is probably the most underrated Campesinos!; her prickly pizzicato or melancholy bowing repeatedly add emotional heft to Gareth's conversational vocals. Tom, the guitarist, writes the bulk of the compositions, and he often keeps himself busy this time with more than the standard acoustic strums; there's even some slide guitar on lust-not-love advance mp3 "Romance Is Boring (Princess Version)" (all the songs here are subtly retitled from their album versions). Other mildly revelatory change-ups include a deep, Nico-ish lead vocal to start the most dramatically different track, "Letters From Me to Charlotte (RSVP)"-- presumably by new keyboardist Kim-- and a deeper, Silver Jews-ish backing vocal by another new member, Rob, right when Gareth is enunciating the most embarrassing lyrics on wryly hooky break-up anthem "Straight in at 101/ It's Never Enough". Two guys singing about not getting any play might be funnier than one.

There's a moment on the album version of "In Medias Res" where the lyrics become completely incomprehensible, hidden behind electronic cacophony. That's important, because it shows a band whose appeal has largely relied on Gareth's way with words really making a case for themselves as noise-makers, too. On the EP's "(All's Well That Ends) In Medias Res", however, we hear some new lines, over rickety piano and Harriet's violin: "You know I'd sooner go down in a ball of flames/ Than I would lay here and be bored to death/ All's well that ends." Surely Los Campesinos! don't believe that, but they know what it's like to feel it, and it's fun when they can make you feel it, too. It's a way to get the emotional release of mythologized self-destruction without the atavistic dumbness.

A new report this month from Nielsen says MySpace now accounts for only 5.6% of people's online social-networking time. Meanwhile, Los Campesinos!-- who made their name through and originally sounded like products of that Web 2.0 site-- have gone from the little hobby of some UK college students to a seasoned band playing mid-size U.S. venues and late-night network TV. If they've succeeded where Rupert Murdoch couldn't, it's because they've grown and adapted without losing sight of what made them Internet sensations in the first place. The All's Well That Ends EP may not be the end for Los Campesinos!, but it's definitely the end of the beginning.